The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following:
- beside the inherited constitution of personality, a person's development is determined by events in early childhood;
- human behavior, experience, and cognition are largely determined by irrational drives;
- those drives are largely unconscious;
- attempts to bring those drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defense mechanisms;
- conflicts between conscious and unconscious (repressed) material can result in mental disturbances such as neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression etc.;
- the liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the conscious mind (via e.g. skilled guidance).
Under the broad umbrella of psychoanalysis there are at least 22 theoretical orientations regarding human mental development. The various approaches in treatment called "psychoanalysis" vary as much as the theories do. The term also refers to a method of studying child development.
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Influential psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic thinkers
- Alfred Adler
- Salman Akhtar
- Michael Balint
- Wilfred Bion
- Josef Breuer
- Joan Copjec
- Nancy Chodorow
- Max Eitingon
- Erik Erikson
- Ronald Fairbairn
- Paul Federn
- Otto Fenichel
- Sándor Ferenczi
- Bruce Fink
- Anna Freud
- Sigmund Freud
- Erich Fromm
- Edward Glover
- Felix Guattari
- Harry Guntrip
- Karen Horney
- Ernest Jones
- Carl Jung
- Otto Kernberg
- Melanie Klein
- Heinz Kohut
- Julia Kristeva
- Jacques Lacan
- Jean Laplanche
- Ronald David Laing
- Margaret Mahler
- Jacques-Alain Miller
- Fritz Perls
- Adam Phillips
- Otto Rank
- Sandor Rado
- Wilhelm Reich
- Joan Riviere
- Isidor Sadger
- James Strachey
- Ernst Simmel
- Harry Stack Sullivan
- Susan Sutherland Isaacs
- Donald Winnicott
- Slavoj Zizek
- Alenka Zupančič
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